James Carroll: Will the Inspiring Revolutions in the Arab World Help Westerners See the Folly of Their Prejudices?

Since 2001, Americans have been living with a nightmare Arab, a Muslim monster threatening us to the core, chilling our souls with the cry, “God is great!” Yet after two months of world-historic protest and rebellion in streets and squares across the Arab world, we are finally waking up to another reality: that this was our bad dream, significantly a creation of our own fevered imaginations.

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The Destiny of This Pageant Lies in the Kingdom of Oil

The Middle East earthquake of the past five weeks has been the most tumultuous, shattering, mind-numbing experience in the history of the region since the fall of the Ottoman empire. For once, "shock and awe" was the right description.

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A New Sense of Populist Empowerment Grips the Middle East

Across the Middle East, protesters clashed with pro-government mobs and security forces Wednesday and Thursday, the latest sign that the tools of repression that leaders in the region have relied on for years are now, instead, propelling more people to the streets.

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Nafeez Ahmed: The Great Unravelling: Tunisia, Egypt and the Protracted Collapse of the American Empire

The toppling of dictator Ben Ali in Tunisia in the wake of mass protests and bloody street clashes has been widely recognized as signifying a major transformation in the future of politics and geopolitics for the major countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). There is little doubt that the Tunisian experience triggered the escalation of unprecedented protests in Egypt against the Mubarak regime. The question on every media pundit's lips is, "Will events in Tunisia and Egypt have a domino effect throughout the Arab world?'

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